The tech giant says that NeuralFabric’s technology will work within Cisco’s AI Canvas, a generative AI user interface introduced earlier this year.
Cisco Systems intends to buy enterprise AI platform company NeuralFabric Corp. as the tech giant grows its generative AI prowess, the companies revealed Thursday.
Seattle-based NeuralFabric was founded in 2023 by former Microsoft engineers. The startup has “cracked” the code on data sovereignty as a challenge to AI adoption, said DJ Sampath, vice president of product, AI software and platform for Cisco, in a blog post about the acquisition.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
NeuralFabric’s generative AI platform lets organizations develop domain-specific small language models (SLMs) using their own proprietary data that’s deployable across SaaS and on-premise environments, Sampath said.
“The development of SLMs and domain-specific AI models like the Deep Network Model are just the beginning of Cisco’s commitment to our customers in the AI era,” he said.
NeuralFabric’s technology will work with Cisco’s AI Canvas, a tool with agentic AI capabilities for customers and partners that was introduced at Cisco Live in June.
“NeuralFabric’s capabilities will help develop and strengthen the foundation of AI Canvas by introducing advanced tools for modular SLM development, streamlined model training, and flexible deployment options,” Sampath explained.
The upstart’s approach to AI anticipates tomorrow’s requirements through continuous learning from real-world data patterns, predictive use case modeling and proactive compliance monitoring, he said.
Cisco has been making good on its 2024 promise to place its bets on AI to the tune of $1 billion. One way the tech giant has been doing that is by investing heavily in AI startups that are new on the scene, in addition to buying AI companies.
Cisco in April revealed an investment into one-year old startup Gruve.ai, a Redwood City, Calif.-based startup that the tech giant called an emerging “visionary” in helping enterprises harness outcome-based AI solutions. In February, Cisco revealed it had teamed with one of its investment companies, two-year old French AI startup Mistral AI, for the creation of an AI agent that the two companies said will cut down on product renewal times for Cisco’s own renewal team.
Cisco also invested in upstarts Cohere and Scale AI last year as part of its AI investment fund launch in June 2024. Last year, Cisco also bought two AI companies: Deeper Insights AI Ltd. and Robust Intelligence.
